Which AVCHD format for play by Blu Ray player

david_f_knight wrote on 3/6/2010, 12:40 PM

I also own a Panasonic Blu-ray disc player, the DMP-BD60. Here are my experiences:

You cannot play AVCHD through the USB port. The USB port is for viewing jpeg photos.

You can play AVCHD through the SDHC port and with DVD discs.

To play AVCHD, it must comform to the standard for whichever particular media it is on. That is slightly different for SDHC vs. DVD. In either case, the standard is not just a simple file, but rather a whole directory structure recorded onto the media with a particular format.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 does not have any option for creating the required AVCHD directory structure, and DVD Architect Studio 4.5 does not support any form of AVCHD output. However, you can still achieve what you want with VMSP9 by creating Blu-ray compatible output and then converting it to the AVCHD structure with another program. (As you noted, VMSP9 does provide some AVCHD render options. These options produce just a simple file without any of the other required files and structure of AVCHD. Furthermore, in my experience, the audio in those AVCHD files is corrupt. But rendering output to Blu-ray disc format produces both good video and audio.)

Here are the steps that work well for me:
1) Create and edit your high-definition video in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9, and render it out to your computer hard disk in Blu-ray iso image format (Make Movie/Burn it to a DVD, Blu-ray Disc, or CD/Blu-ray Disc/Render image only + Sony AVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*.avc) + Blu-ray 1920x1080-60i, 16 Mbps video stream). (Note: 18Mbps is the highest bit rate that DVDs support; they do not support a 24Mbps video stream. If you require a 24Mbps video stream then you must use a Blu-ray writer and Blu-ray media or a class 4 or higher SDHC card. There is nothing wrong or unreasonable with recording your video at 24Mbps for the highest possible quality and then rendering it for 16Mbps output. The results are excellent.)

2) Mount the Blu-ray disk iso image file created in step 1 to a virtual drive on your file system. (You can use the free DAEMON Tools Lite program to mount it. If you use Windows XP you need to install UDF 2.50 file system drivers first, which can be obtained for free. Vista and Windows 7 supposedly support UDF 2.50 natively, but I don't have either and haven't tested them to confirm that.)

3) Use the multiAVCHD program to convert the Blu-ray m2ts video file on the virtual drive that the Blu-ray iso file image was mounted on in step 2. multiAVCHD converts the m2ts file to either the AVCHD DVD or the AVCHD SDHC structure depending on the output option you choose and writes it to your computer hard disk. (multiAVCHD is shareware or something. You can try it out for free. If you like it, you can donate whatever you choose to the author.)

4) For AVCHD DVDs, burn the AVCHD DVD structure and files created in step 3 onto a DVD. You can use the free ImgBurn program to do so. You must burn the DVD using the UDF 2.50 file system, which is selectable in ImgBurn. For AVCHD SDHC cards (I haven't tried this yet, so I'm guessing) just copy the AVCHD SDHC structure and files created in step 3 onto an SDHC card. The SDHC card must be formatted in the FAT32 file system.

5) Play your AVCHD DVD on any AVCHD compatible Blu-ray disk player, which includes the Panasonics. You get Blu-ray disk quality on DVD media. It's great, but you're limited to about 40 minutes of AVCHD video per single layer DVD. For AVCHD SDHC, just plug it into the SDHC slot in the Panasonic Blu-ray disk player and you're good to go.

Ninan wrote on 3/6/2010, 2:39 PM

@david_f_knight, should I follow the same above mentioned steps to get a DVD playable on my combo optical drive whose specs include, among others:
DVD BD Reading : Yes
DVD BD-RE Reading :Yes
DVD BD-R Reading : Yes
DVD BD-Rom Reading :Yes
DVD HD Reading : No

david_f_knight wrote on 3/6/2010, 3:24 PM

My guess is probably not. It looks to me from those specs that your optical drive is not AVCHD compatible, but is BD5 compatible. They are very similar, though. BD5 is Blu-ray disc structure and format on single layer DVD media (specifically, DVD-R, in your case). What I suggest trying is steps 1 + 4* + 5 above, which should record your video in BD5 structure and format onto DVD media. By the way, BD5 must also be recorded with the UDF 2.50 file system, which I have described in step 4 above. The same restrictions for AVDCH on DVD apply for BD5, i.e., 18Mbps max transfer rate and about 40 minutes per (single layer) DVD (at 16Mbps).

Keep in mind this is only a guess on my part, so there are no guarantees. Let us know how it goes, and good luck!

* Step 4 must to be modified for you. The file that Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 produces in step 1 already has the UDF 2.50 file system and is I believe fully BD5 compliant (as long as it is no larger than 4.7GB). All you should have to do is burn that iso file from step 1 onto a DVD-R. When you burn it, it must also be finalized, as ImgBurn does, however. That means you can't "drag-and-drop" the iso file onto your DVD, but must use a DVD writer program, more or less.

Ninan wrote on 3/6/2010, 3:38 PM

Thanks. I'll give it a try and let you know.

edit. Alas. The result has been a failure, whether I burn disc straight from the VMS timeline, or write it with ImgBurn. To be precise: 1. Power Dvd Dx does not see the disc at all. 2. WMP can play the "stream" file from the BDMV folder written on the disc (identified as AVCHD .m2ts). But it is video only, no audio. I've tried both, Sony AVC and MPEG2 formats. Neither of the processes, rendering on HD or burning disc, reports any error. I'd like to know whether I am doing something wrong, or is it my optical disc that does not respond?

alpine101 wrote on 3/7/2010, 3:43 AM

For use with Panasonics, you also need to make sure you select the 'strict' switches in MultiAVCHD.
Images burnt directly with the AVCHD output from Vegas (Project/Render as../AVCHD) do not work with Panasonics, which is why you need MultiAVCHD to correct the output.

david_f_knight wrote on 3/7/2010, 11:23 AM

To Ninan:

I can only makes some suggestions, as your setup is pretty different from mine, and I'm guessing what parts of it are. (I'm running Windows XP, but I assume you are running either Vista or Windows 7.)

For one thing, even though you are burning your disc onto DVD media, it is in the Blu-ray format (BD5). That means that you can write your disk with a DVD writer, but you can only play it with a Blu-ray disc player (that supports BD5)! (That's not quite accurate: you can read your disc as a data disk in a DVD drive, but you cannot play it as a video disk in a DVD drive. Some programs, like VLC (see below), can play m2ts files from AVCHD or BD5 disks in DVD writers/players.)

I assume you actually have two different optical drives: a DVD writer in your computer, and a Blu-ray disc player (that you gave the specs for previously) connected to your HD TV. All this is confusing, so it's important to keep everything straight and say exactly what you're doing and on which equipment.

Anyway, I expect Power DVD DX will not see your BD5 disk in your computer's DVD writer unless you put it in a Blu-ray disc player/writer in your computer. That's because Power DVD DX looks at discs as video disks and not as data disks. The other thing is, from the title of it, I assume Power DVD DX will not play Blu-ray (BD5) disks even if you have a Blu-ray player/writer in your computer. (Once again, I am guessing because I don't have Power DVD DX, but that would be an odd name for a program that can play Blu-ray discs.)

On to the other issue: let's determine where the problem actually is. Do step 2 in my first post, so that you can access the individual files from within the iso image created in step 1, from your computer hard disk (rather than from your BD5 disc). Once you've done that, try to play the m2ts file from the BDMV/STREAM folder from your virtual drive created by DAEMON Tools Lite. Does that have audio or is it video only? If it has audio, then your BD5 disk is probably bad, but if it doesn't play the audio then your rendered file is probably bad. My guess is that it will not have audio, but let's see what happens.

One more thing: Windows Media Player in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is more advanced than the Windows Media Player in Windows XP that I have, in terms of AVCHD/BD/m2ts support. In other words, on my computer, WMP can't play AVCHD/BD/m2ts files anyway. I use the free VLC media player for AVCHD playback. You might want to download a copy (at least version 1.0.3) and give it a try, since I know that actually works. That will let us determine if there is some problem with your WMP.

david_f_knight wrote on 3/7/2010, 1:01 PM

One more thing: For step 1 that I gave in my first post, I assumed that you are in a country whose TV, DVD, and Blu-ray equipment uses the NTSC standard, as in the US where I live. However, if you are in a country whose TV, DVD, and Blu-ray equipment uses the PAL standard, then you need to modify my instructions a little bit. For you, you should do essentially the same as for NTSC but use a PAL-appropriate project settings and render template, such as:

1) [PAL-only:] Create and edit your high-definition video in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9, and render it out to your computer hard disk in Blu-ray iso image format (Make Movie/Burn it to a DVD, Blu-ray Disc, or CD/Blu-ray Disc/Render image only + Sony AVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*.avc) + Blu-ray 1920x1080-50i, 16 Mbps video stream).

Ninan wrote on 3/8/2010, 1:56 PM

@david_f_knight. Before I proceed with further experimenting, following your advice, some info:
1. yes, I am from the PAL zone, and naturally I take this into account while rendering;
2. my OS is W7 and WMP which comes with it plays beautifully all HD and AVCHD clips;
3. Power DVD DX which has been originally installed on my laptop (Dell ST1747) is supposed to play Blu-Ray Discs as well;
4. my optical disc is a combo type, i.e. it writes CD and DVD, but is supposed to play CD, DVD and BD;

So, it seems that either something is wrong with the hardware, or one of the software elements is corrupted? Strangely enough the icon of the stream file in the BDMV folder indicates that it is both video & audio (if I correctly interpret the violin key in it) but the specs of the file show that it is video only. All this is a complete mystery for me. Nevertheless, I will keep trying. And thank you for your assistance. n

david_f_knight wrote on 3/9/2010, 10:11 AM

To Ninan:

A couple more questions: When you put a pre-recorded (i.e., a known good) Blu-ray disk in your optical drive:

1) Does PowerDVD Dx see it? Can it play it?

2) Can WMP play any "stream" file from the BDMV folder written on the pre-recorded disk? Is it identified as AVCHD .m2ts in the same way as the BD5 disk you created from Vegas?

I just did a little research. Apparently, PowerDVD DX is a Dell Computer OEM version of one of the Cyberlink PowerDVD products. There are several retail versions of PowerDVD available, but not all of them play the same varieties of BD disks and formats. I don't have any idea which retail product PowerDVD DX is supposed to be similar to, or which version (i.e., 8 or 9) you have of it.

Things are much more complicated in a computer than they are in a stand-alone Blu-ray disk player, because in a computer, playing any particular disk depends on both the optical drive's capabilities and on the disk playback software's capabilities, plus operating system capabilities and sound card capabilities and graphics card capabilities and so on each of which is made by a different company and none of them cooperate with each other, not to mention the documentation for computer hardware included in pre-built computers, like anything from Dell, and OEM software, is notoriously bad and incomplete or just plain non-existent. A standalone Blu-ray disk player, on the other hand, is a complete system, and they come with owners' manuals that (should) describe exactly which formats are supported. They are far more reliable and predictable than computer-based video disk playback.

I just saw a thread at Dell that had several Dell owners with PowerDVD DX angrily complaining that their computers can't play pre-recorded Blu-ray discs and Dell hasn't done anything to help.

Mixing all these variables together makes it hard to determine what the problem is or even if it is possible to play any BD5 disk in your computer.

One more thing: several of the retail PowerDVD products do play AVCHD disks, so it might be worth your while to try creating one just as I described in my first message in this thread. The specs for your optical drive are, possibly, largely irrelevant since PowerDVD DX may really be the limiting factor in your computer.

Finally, if your goal is playing HD content on your computer, then recording disks in the BD5 (or in the AVCHD DVD) formats is not your only option. You could render to some other HD format and just play those files with WMP and forget all about PowerDVD DX. You can copy those HD files onto regular DVD disks if you like, without bothering with any of this AVCHD DVD or BD5 stuff. The AVCHD DVD or BD5 approach is generally important only if you want to play your HD stuff on a standalone Blu-ray disk player connected to a HD TV.

Ninan wrote on 3/9/2010, 1:58 PM

@david_f_knight.
ad 1. Frankly, I haven't tried any other, except of my own "production" blu-ray disks; I see I have to.
ad 2. Yes, WMP can play any "stream" file from the BDMV folder. And they all are AVCHD .m2ts. That's why because of no audio I tended to blame VMS "Make Movie" process for the failure.

As for your other comments, they fully correspond to my vague intuitions: too many variables to find an easy answer, at least for me.

Anyhow, thanks again. This time mainly for pointing to the Dell-PowerDVD forum. Like some of the users from there, I've downloaded the newest patch of PowerDVD - with no result. In spite of the Blu-Ray icon showing up in the program, it does not see the disk.

You are quite correct. While playing HD (or AVCHD) videos on computer alone, in fact I do not need any BD format. But it's slightly irritating that I cannot do what I should be able to.

edit. So, a commercial blu-ray disc is identified and played without any problems. It is described as MPEG-4AVC (whatever that means?), and next to the two folders present on the discs burnt by me, i.e. BDMV, Certificate, it contains another folder called AACS. Strangely enough, six "stream files" in the "stream subfolder" of the BDMV, although they are all also AVCHD .m2ts type, are not playable by WMP. All thi is a real mystery for me.

david_f_knight wrote on 3/10/2010, 11:14 AM

To Ninan:

I don't have any answers, I'm afraid, but I do have a few comments.

I just did some searching in this forum and found that several people have had problems with their audio. They have solved it by rendering the audio separately from the video, and then combining the two rendered files together in another program outside Vegas. Here is an example.

My own experiences seem to be related but a little different. I didn't see those threads about missing audio before I found my solution. When I rendered my AVCHD video to any AVCHD format, the (stereo) audio was present in the file but it was corrupt and would not play. So, I tried rendering to Blu-ray disc format and the audio was fine. But since I really needed my video to be in the AVCHD DVD format, I used multiAVCHD to convert it and I finally had what I needed.

Anyway, I'm not entirely convinced that PowerDVD DX can play BD5. The fact that it doesn't even see your disc in your drive suggests that it can't. Or maybe your BD5 disc just isn't in the proper format. It surprises me that the files on your BD5 disc were identified as AVCHD files because the Vegas Blu-ray render option is to the Blu-ray format, not AVCHD (Sony discusses this in their help files somewhere, I believe, and states that this distinguishes it from (some) other video editing programs). On the other hand, certain retail versions of PowerDVD do reportedly play AVCHD DVDs as well as Blu-ray discs. The fact that Windows Media Player doesn't play the audio in your m2ts files suggests that Vegas is also messing something up. My guess is that you have at least two separate problems going on.

In any case, it seems that if you can find some way to make a BD5 disk that works in your computer, that it will involve considerable effort on your part, possibly rendering your audio separately from your video, combining them externally, and burning that to a DVD in BD5 format. Or, you can just render to some other HD format and use WMP and forget about BD5 and PowerDVD DX.

It's hard to keep track of everything I've read, but I think that the Blu-ray spec no longer allows BD5 or BD9 discs, anyway, but just currently BD25 and BD50 discs. (BD5=single layer DVD media, BD9=dual-layer DVD media, BD25=single-layer Blu-ray media, BD50=dual layer Blu-ray media, all in Blu-ray format.) If so, AVCHD DVD is the only currently allowed HD format for DVD media. This is an issue only for hardware and software built after whatever change in the Blu-ray specification may have occurred.

Ninan wrote on 3/11/2010, 11:29 AM

To david_f_knight

Thank you for your patience, It seems that your premontions have been 100% correct. And here are my results so far:
* tsmuxer has taken care of the missing audio. Muxed stream files are played by WMP, both video and audio. My guess is that WMP does not see audio in a stream file rendered by "Make Movie" because the audio is encoded as Sony64 (.w64), not as .ac3. A question is why VMS does not allow of an .ac3 option under "Make Movie"? Another question concerns the VLC player. It seems that many Vegas users consider it superior to WMP. Maybe VLC identifies .w64? However, before downloading VLC compliant with w7, I discovered that it is described as win32 bit version. Do you think it would matter that my w7 is 64 bit?
* PowerDVD DX does not identify either BD5 (BD9) or AVCHD discs. It may be the case that the commercial versions of PowerDVD do - I will try to find out more about the problem.

david_f_knight wrote on 3/11/2010, 2:38 PM

Your guess about WMP having a problem with audio encoded as Sony64 seems reasonable, but I can't confirm one way or the other.

As for VLC:

I expect that the 32-bit version of VLC will work under 64-bit versions of Windows. (I only have 32-bit Windows, so I'm just guessing.) I think nearly all 32-bit applications will work under 64-bit Windows (if they work under the same version of 32-bit Windows), but will still have the limitations of any 32-bit program. On the other hand, no 64-bit application will run under a 32-bit version of Windows. As an example, Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 is a 32-bit application, and it works with your 64-bit Windows. Incidentally, you could try the portable version of VLC if you are concerned that it will mess up your computer. The portable version isn't installed at all (you just execute the .exe file when you want to use it), and so it doesn't modify the Windows registry, and is very benign.

I don't have Vegas Pro, but I understand one of the major differences between it and all versions of Vegas Movie Studio is that the Pro version allows customizing render options much more than the others do, and so maybe you have to use the Pro version to use .ac3 with Blu-ray?

VLC has been around for awhile. I like it because it can natively play AVCHD files and it's free. Windows Media Player cannot play them natively under Windows XP (the operating system I have); it is only the Vista and Windows 7 versions of WMP that can play AVCHD natively, and the XP version cannot be upgraded to the newer version. Anyway, I render my AVCHD video as described in my first message in this thread and the audio is encoded as Sony64 and I am able to play that (video and audio) with VLC (portable) 1.0.3. I only had problems with the audio when I rendered my video as AVCHD with .ac3 audio. (The Make Movie AVCHD output choice doesn't offer Sony64 encoding as an audio option but only .ac3 .)

Ninan wrote on 3/14/2010, 10:35 AM

To david_f_knight.
Sorry to bother you again. You must've found out that I am a complete novice in the video software, but I am trying to learn,
I've addressed PowerDVD TechSupport what I can expect from their version for Dell (yes, they list it as a separate version but do not provide any specs). Should their answer be: yes, BD5, BD9 and AVCHD are supported (as in their retail models), I will keep experimenting. In connection with this, please clarify point 2 Nad 3 in your first post above. When I've mounted my .iso file into DaemonToolsLite, it is still in .iso format. How do I isolate .m2ts file to take it to multiAVCHD?
PS. Of course, the VLC player can play audio of all my files that were "mute" in WMP

david_f_knight wrote on 3/14/2010, 1:11 PM

What DAEMON Tools Lite does is it creates a virtual optical drive on your computer, which you then access by its drive letter the same as you would any real optical drive on your computer. You also use DAEMON Tools Lite to mount or unmount a .iso file from its virtual drive, which is the virtual equivalent of putting a disc in or out of an optical drive.

So, to access a .m2ts file from within the Blu-ray format .iso file Vegas created, first use DAEMON Tools Lite to mount that .iso file to a virtual drive, and take note of the drive letter assigned to it. Then run multiAVCHD as usual and click its "Add video files" button. Use the dialog window that pops up to navigate to the drive letter of the virtual optical drive DAEMON Tools Lite created for your computer. Once there you should see all the directories and files as though you had an actual disc in an actual optical drive. It's pretty cool! You can do the same kind of thing to play .m2ts files within .iso files with WMP or VLC or any other program (but the .m2ts files are read-only, unless you make a copy of them with Windows Explorer).

If the VLC player can properly play all your files that WMP couldn't play, then Vegas is not the guilty party, WMP is!

Mad Pierre wrote on 3/23/2010, 7:02 AM

Hey David. Sorry forgot to say thanks. It worked fine for an SDHC card - and yes you just copy the correct structure across and it works.

Ninan wrote on 4/5/2010, 4:13 PM

@david_f_knight. Weeks of experimenting and at last I found out that the only software player for BD5/BD9 that works well with my optical drive is ArcSoft Total Media Theatre 3. Unlike other players, it reads both the disks rendered from the VMS timelina, and those authored with DVDA5 or multiAVCHD.